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Gilberto Valle, Officer Plotted to Abduct, Cook and Eat Women

The police officer recorded details like the woman?s date of birth, height, weight and bra size. He made note of certain materials, like chloroform and rope.

And then the officer, Gilberto Valle, a six-year veteran of the New York Police Department, created a document on his computer, calling it a blueprint for ?Abducting and Cooking.? In one of the most disturbing and unusual arrests involving a police officer, agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation took Officer Valle into custody on Wednesday after they uncovered several plots to kidnap, rape, cook and eat women.

?I was thinking of tying her body onto some kind of apparatus,? he wrote to a co-conspirator in one electronic communication recovered by law enforcement authorities. ?Cook her over a low heat, keep her alive as long as possible.?

When the co-conspirator asked how big the officer?s oven was, Officer Valle replied, ?Big enough to fit one of these girls if I folded their legs.?

Two law enforcement officials familiar with the inquiry said the officer?s estranged wife recently contacted the F.B.I. to report that Officer Valle, 28, viewed and kept disturbing items on his computer. The couple has a daughter, age 1.

The criminal complaint suggests that Officer Valle, who worked in the 26th Precinct in Manhattan and lives in Forest Hills, Queens, never followed through on any of the acts he is accused of discussing.

His lawyer, Julia L. Gatto, said the officer committed no crime. ?At worst, this is someone who has sexual fantasies,? Ms. Gatto said at a hearing on Thursday in Federal District Court in Manhattan.

?There is no actual crossing the line from fantasy to reality,? she added.

But a federal prosecutor, Hadassa Waxman, said Mr. Valle had communicated with three co-conspirators about his plans to commit a crime, and at one point used a police car while dressed in uniform to conduct surveillance of a woman, approaching her in ?an intimidating fashion.?

Magistrate Judge Henry B. Pitman ordered Officer Valle to be held without bail on charges of federal kidnapping conspiracy.

The evidence consists largely of e-mails and instant messages in which Officer Valle was ?discussing plans to kidnap, rape, torture, kill, cook and eat body parts of a number of women,? according to the complaint, which describes two episodes in which Officer Valle discussed abducting women. In each case, it appears that the women knew the officer vaguely. And in at least one case, the officer used the National Crime Information Center to get information about a third woman.

In a search of the officer?s computer, federal investigators discovered ?files pertaining to at least 100 women,? according to the complaint. Some of them were his classmates from high school, a law enforcement official said.

?The F.B.I. has identified and interviewed 10 of these women, each of whom has confirmed to the F.B.I. that Valle is known to her,? the complaint said.

A law enforcement official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said investigators feared that Officer Valle might soon carry out one of his plots.

In February, Officer Valle offered to kidnap a woman on an unnamed person?s behalf for a price: ?$5,000 and she is all yours,? the officer wrote to that person, according to the complaint.

Officer Valle appeared to be under the impression that the person he was communicating with intended to rape the woman, according to the complaint.

?She will be alive,? he wrote. ?I think I would rather not get involved in the rape. You paid for her. She is all yours, and I don?t want to be tempted the next time I abduct a girl.?

While the complaint does not identify the woman in question, F.B.I. agents later learned that cellphone tracking devices indicated that Officer Valle had made or received calls on the block in Manhattan where the woman lived.

On July 19, Officer Valle sent an instant message to the co-conspirator, indicating that he was meeting with Victim-1 three days later, according to the complaint. The victim, who was interviewed in October by the F.B.I., said she had met the officer that day ?at a restaurant for lunch,? according to the complaint. What happened during or after the lunch was not disclosed.

A dating profile, which a law enforcement official confirmed belonged to Officer Valle, suggested an engaging and gregarious young man. He wrote that he had attended Archbishop Molloy High School in Queens and the University of Maryland, College Park. (At the court hearing on Thursday, the officer wore a red T-shirt affiliated with the university.)

?I can find the humor in any situation,? he had written, adding that he had ?an endless supply of hilarious short stories from work that can?t be made up.?

Colin Moynihan, Sarah Maslin Nir and Wendy Ruderman contributed reporting.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: October 27, 2012

An article on Friday about Officer Gilberto Valle, who is accused of plotting to abduct, cook and eat women, misstated, in some copies, the way in which Officer Gilberto Valle referred to a woman who was the subject of a file on his computer. He used the woman?s actual first name ? not the term ?Victim-1,? which was substituted in a court document.

you guys heard of this? i don't know much, but i heard a brief bit on the radio and got the chills because of the line in bold. what a horrible thing to consider doing to anyone!

John MarshallMantel forThe New York Times Gilberto Valle’s lawyer, JuliaL. Gatto, center right, said that she did not believe the prosecution had proved its case and that her client had been convicted for his “very ugly thoughts.”

ByBENJAMIN WEISER Published: March 12, 2013

A New York police officer was convicted on Tuesday in a bizarre plot to kidnap, torture, kill and eat women, ending a trial whose outcome hinged on a delicate distinction between fantasy and reality.

The trial had drawn widespread attention, in part because it involved an officer’s disturbing behavior, but also because it raised a fundamental question: When does a virtual crime, contemplated in Internet chat rooms, become an actual crime?

There was no evidence that any of the women whom the officer, Gilberto Valle, was accused of plotting to kill were harmed. But prosecutors argued that the officer took actual steps to further his plot, like conducting surveillance of potential victims.

Mr. Valle, 28, could receive life in prison for one count of kidnapping conspiracy when he is sentenced on June 19. The Police Department fired him upon conviction.

His lawyer, Julia L. Gatto, called the verdict “devastating” and said the government had not proved its case. “This was a thought prosecution,” she said. “These are thoughts, very ugly thoughts, but we don’t prosecute people for their thoughts. And we’ll continue to appeal and continue to fight for Mr. Valle.”

The trial highlighted some of the darkest corners of the Internet, where fetishists hide behind Web identities like Girlmeat Hunter — the name that Mr. Valle used — and engage in role-playing fantasy about cannibalism and sexual torture.

At the crux of the case was whether prosecutors could prove that Mr. Valle, who is married and has a baby girl, was not simply role playing, as so many of his like-minded Internet peers apparently were, but laying the groundwork for actually kidnapping, torturing and killing the women he had singled out.

The prosecutors, Randall W. Jackson and Hadassa Waxman, built their case around the chats and other online messages that Mr. Valle had exchanged with three co-conspirators and what prosecutors said were other concrete steps that he had taken to bring his plan to fruition.

The United States attorney in Manhattan,Preet Bharara, said the jury unanimously found that Mr. Valle’s “detailed and specific plans to abduct women for the purpose of committing grotesque crimes were very real.”

“The Internet is a forum for the free exchange of ideas,” he continued, “but it does not confer immunity for plotting crimes and taking steps to carry out those crimes.”

The verdict came on the 12th day of Mr. Valle’s trial in Federal District Court, where he was also convicted of illegally gaining access to a law enforcement database that prosecutors said he had used to conduct research on potential victims. He faces up to one year in prison on that count.

After the verdict, several members of the six-man, six-woman jury said an early straw poll had shown a broad split on the main conspiracy charge: about four jurors believed Mr. Valle to be not guilty, another group of perhaps five saw him as guilty, and the rest were undecided, one juror recalled.

“I did not know which way I was going to go — I was leaning toward not guilty,” another juror recalled feeling as deliberations began. The jurors, who all spoke on the condition of anonymity, said they spent about half a day reading the judge’s instructions, and outlined the case chronologically with pieces of paper on a wall.

At one point, two jurors read Mr. Valle’s chats aloud, with one reading his words and another reading his conspirators’ words. His communications with one man, who used the screen identity Moody Blues, were pivotal, a juror recalled. Without those chats, the juror said, there might have been a not-guilty verdict.

A third juror said: “I hate to see a person ruin their life — a baby, a wife, a career as a cop. And you hate to see that happen to people.”

A juror recalled wondering whether Mr. Valle had merely been “trying to make his fantasy more real.” As the jury reviewed the evidence methodically, the juror said, “the more you thought, ‘Yeah, this is for real.’ ”

In her summation, Ms. Waxman pointed to a brunch in Maryland in July 2012, where Mr. Valle, his wife and their baby visited Kimberly Sauer, a college friend of the officer’s, as an example of how he conducted surveillance of an intended victim. Ms. Waxman cited messages that Mr. Valle had exchanged with Moody Blues before and after that trip. She told jurors to “connect the dots, to look at the big picture.”

“When I see her Sunday my mouth will be watering,” Mr. Valle wrote three days before the brunch, adding that he would be “eyeing her from head to toe” and longed “for the day I cram a chloroform-soaked rag in her face.”

He had also conducted Google searches for phrases like “how to abduct a girl” and “how to chloroform a girl,” evidence showed.

After the brunch, Ms. Waxman told the jury, he wrote again to Moody Blues: “She looked absolutely mouthwatering. I could hardly contain myself.”

Ms. Waxman argued, “It is absolutely clear that this trip to Maryland was not innocent.”

Ms. Gatto, a federal public defender, contended that prosecutors had presented a distorted picture about what by all accounts had been “a lovely brunch amongst old college friends.”

“The trip wasn’t so that Gil could conduct surveillance on Kim,” she said. Her client’s fantasy role playing about Ms. Sauer made “perfect sense,” she added. “You fantasize about the people you are thinking of seeing.”

As for Mr. Valle’s Internet searches, she told the jury, he had been “Googling a host of awful things, because that’s what he fantasizes about; that’s Gil’s porn.”

Joseph V. DeMarco, an Internet lawyer and former head of the cybercrime unit in the federal prosecutor’s office in Manhattan, said the verdict underscored the fact that “as much as we like to think of things happening ‘in cyberspace,’ the reality is that Internet and e-mail are simply new methods of communication, and that when those communications involve planning crimes, the fact that the planning is done online is fundamentally no different than when they happen on the telephone — or for that matter in person.”

Mr. DeMarco said Mr. Valle was treated no differently under the law than someone conspiring to commit crimes like terrorism, drugs or insider trading.

The defense team, which also included Robert M. Baum, Edward S. Zas and John J. Hughes III, said it would ask the judge, Paul G. Gardephe, to throw out the verdict, and beyond that, pursue all appeal options.

Mr. Valle’s wife, Kathleen Mangan-Valle, who was not in the courtroom on Tuesday, had testified that she reported her husband’s Internet activities to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, including her discovery that he had considered her as a potential victim.

Mr. Valle embraced Ms. Gatto before being led away. Judge Gardephe observed from the bench that no defendant had “received a more vigorous defense than that presented here, and I think that is obvious to everyone in the courtroom.”

Where's the beef? NYPD 'cannibal cop' is now a jailhouse COOK one year after he was convicted of plotting to kidnap and eat women

A former NYPD officer branded the 'cannibal cop' for allegedly plotting to kidnap, murder and eat more than 100 women is now working as a jailhouse cook, it was revealed today. And his pizza is so good, even the guards eat it. Gilberto Valle was convicted in March 2013 of conspiring to commit heinous acts of murder, torture and cannibalism - including on his own wife.

The New York Daily News reports that Valle's mother, Elizabeth, says her son now 'kills time' cooking lunch and breakfast at Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan. Valle is appealing the conviction and a federal judge has not passed sentence on the former Queens, New York, patrolman while he weighs whether to grant a new trial. Valle's fellow inmates know all about his reputation and even crack wise about his alleged plot to skin and roast women like sides of beef.

'Don’t stand too close to the oven!' the prisoners joke, Mrs Valle told the Daily News. For his work in the kitchen, Valle is paid 44 cents an hour. His mother says it keeps him occupied while he plots his new defense tactics. Valle, a patrolman for the NYPD, was arrested in October 2012 after his wife, Kathleen Mangan, found disturbing pictures on his computer that he had downloaded from the site DarkFetishNet.com.

The FBI found a list of 100 women he said he planned to kill, cook and eat. They also found a transcript of an online chat in which he said he planned to take his 'girlfriend' Kathleen to Pakistan, where he and another man would murder her and cannibalize her body. Valle maintains that his extensive writings were nothing more than fantasy - never meant to be acted on or carried out. 'He’s not the monster they portray him to be,' Mrs Valle told the Daily News. 'He's innocent.' Mangan, who testified against her husband at trial, was granted a divorce in July, Mrs Valle said. She has taken the couple's young daughter and completely cut off all contact with Valle and his family, she said.

they weren't just thoughts though, they were plans... he actively sought out women and stalked them. he accessed police databases to find people and watched them and found reasons to come in contact with them. i don't see how that's any different than paying a hitman.

NEW YORK (AP) — A former NYPD police officer has been ordered to home detention pending an appeal by the government after a judge overturned his conviction of plotting to kidnap, kill and eat young women.

The judge ruled late Monday there was insufficient evidence to support the conviction of Gilberto Valle (VAL'-ee). He acquitted him of kidnapping conspiracy charges.

The judge set Valle's bail at $100,000; he's expected to be released later Tuesday.

A smiling Valle hugged his lawyers. Valle could have faced life in prison.

He was convicted in March 2013. A jury concluded he wasn't just fantasizing when he conversed online with others he had never met about killing and cooking his wife and others in a cannibalism plot.

NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge has overturned the conviction of a former New York City police officer accused of plotting to kidnap, kill and eat young women.

Judge Paul Gardephe ruled late Monday that there was insufficient evidence to support the conviction of Gilberto Valle, defense attorney Julia Gatto said Tuesday.

"The judge's well-reasoned decision validates what we have said since the beginning: There was no crime," she said. "Gil Valle is innocent of any conspiracy. Gil is guilty of nothing more than having unconventional thoughts."

Valle, who could have faced life in prison, was acquitted of kidnapping conspiracy charges, the most serious count he faced.

He was convicted in March 2013 and had not yet been sentenced.

A jury had concluded he wasn't just fantasizing when he conversed online with others he had never met about killing and cooking his wife and others in a cannibalism plot.

In his 118-page opinion, first reported by The New York Times, Gardephe said: "The evidentiary record is such that it is more likely than not the case that all of Valle's Internet communications about kidnapping are fantasy role-play."

The judge planned a hearing Tuesday morning on the status of the case; Valle has been jailed since his arrest in 2012.

"Gil Valle has been in jail for 18 long months, 7 months in solitary confinement, for a crime he absolutely didn't commit," said Gatto. "We're relieved he will be free and incredibly grateful to Judge Gardephe for upholding the awesome and fundamental legal principles at stake here, including our core freedom to be able to think what we want free of government intrusion."

A call to a spokesman for Manhattan federal prosecutors was not immediately returned.

Prosecutors had argued that Valle took steps to carry out his plot, including looking up potential targets on a restricted law enforcement database; searching the Internet for how to knock someone out with chloroform and where to get torture devices and other tools.

Gardephe upheld Valle's conviction on a charge of illegally gaining access to the law enforcement database, which carried a maximum sentence of one year. Valle was fired after his conviction.

In one of the numerous online conversations shown to the jury during the trial, Valle told a man he met in a fetish chat room, "I want her to experience being cooked alive. She'll be trussed up like a turkey. ... She'll be terrified, screaming and crying."

In another exchange, Valle suggested a woman he knew would be easy prey because she lived alone. The men discussed cooking her, basted in olive oil, over an open fire and using her severed head as a centerpiece for a sit-down meal.